Tag: big pharma
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Draconian but unavoidable? Illumina’s quest for GRAIL ends in a record fine
Sprint races can be decided by hundredths of a second. But the sprinter who pushes off before the starting gun sounds “jumps the gun” and faces harsh punishment. In our never-ending attempts to make competition law sound cool, practitioners refer to the completion of a deal before mandatory clearance is obtained as “gun jumping”, even…
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The loser still pays – The Supreme Court’s judgment on costs in Phenytoin
The UK Supreme Court issued an interesting judgment yesterday involving the question whether the CMA should cover a party’s litigation costs when that party successfully appeals the CMA’s decision under the Competition Act. The judgment is related to the CMA’s decision to impose penalties on Pfizer and Flynn Pharma for hiking up the prices of…
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Sanofi and McKesson/Phoenix – Better late than never?
Early spring brought us a couple of interesting competition law developments involving France. First, the Court of Appeal in Paris annulled a judgment by a lower court that dismissed a damages action against Sanofi in relation to its practice of “denigration” or “disparagement” of competitors. Next, the European Commission partly referred the McKesson/Phoenix merger to…
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No-poach and wage-fixing agreements – Is antitrust game?
No-poach and wage-fixing agreements are somewhat of a new trend in antitrust enforcement. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) recently beat a challenge against its first criminal wage fixing case, involving wages for physical therapists. The DoJ has opened two further labour-related cases, also in healthcare. Meanwhile in the EU, the Commission has been vocal…
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New UK national security rules – What do they mean for life science investments?
The National Security and Investment Act 2021 (NSI Act) comes into force on 4 January 2022. From then, the UK Government will be empowered to call in for review any qualifying acquisition which may give rise to UK national security concerns. The NSI Act captures acquisitions of any size, including in certain cases where minority…
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Pay-for-delay hits 18 in the EU – Adulthood, but what comes next?
(…and four other takeaways from the Cephalon decision) Although the European Commission adopted the latest of its pay-for-delay decisions in November 2020, the Cephalon decision was only published in July of this year. With the Lundbeck agreements first coming under Commission scrutiny in 2003, pay-for-delay enforcement turned 18 this year. Below we set out a…